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Why didn't people buy Call of Duty this year and what does it mean for upcoming games in the franchise ?

Lelouch0612

Lelouch0612

Staff
Archivist Genius Staff
GamesIndustry.biz made a very interesting article where they share the results of the poll they conducted about why so few people bought the latest CoD entry. It is even more crucial since Activision decided to put all of its staff on the game and the franchise to ship it in time for the Holiday season.

The latest charts data coming out of the UK and Europe shows that Call of Duty: Vanguard sold significantly fewer units at launch than its predecessor, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Indeed, in the UK it is the weakest launch for the series in over a decade.

Call of Duty isn't the only game to see slower-than-usual sales in 2021, so what's going on?
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Out of the 671 people we spoke to, 284 people said they have bought a Call of Duty game in the last five years, and out of those, just 59 (21%) said they bought this year's Call of Duty Vanguard.
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Most cited reasons in the poll:
  1. Busy Playing other games - 55%
  2. Too much CoD - 34%
  3. Not interested in WWII games - 24%
  4. Lukewarm reviews - 20%
  5. Warzone is enough - 14%
  6. Waiting for another game - 11% (38% waiting for Halo, 25% for BF)
  7. Boycotting Activision-Blizzard - 6%
  8. Price - 4%
  9. Widespread cheating - 3%
  10. Filesize - 2%
  11. Poor Single Player - 2%
www.gamesindustry.biz

Why didn't people buy Call of Duty this year? | GI Asks

GamesIndustry.biz polled gamers on their decisions around Activision's flagship franchise
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz

Looking at these answers, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Is Vanguard a one-time flop or is it a sign of what's to come for upcoming Premium games in the franchise ? How do you believe the CoD brand should be manage going forward ?
 
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Hopefully, we've finally reached peak CoD and the series steadily declines forcing Activision to do something new with the franchise.

I also think a significant amount of people are still playing the multiplayer in older games (e.g. CoD MW 2019) and Warzone, and saw no need to purchase Vanguard.
 
If I were ActiBlizz I would use the revenue from Warzone and turn CoD back into a bi-annual series to address the fatigue problem. Maybe even drop the CoD title from Black Ops the same Atlus dropped Megami Tensei from Persona titles. Keep it it modern/futuristic era also. That gives them more creative liberty.
 
MysticGon said:
If I were ActiBlizz I would use the revenue from Warzone and turn CoD back into a bi-annual series to address the fatigue problem. Maybe even drop the CoD title from Black Ops the same Atlus dropped Megami Tensei from Persona titles. Keep it it modern/futuristic era also. That gives them more creative liberty.
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Yeah, the annual release cycle has been oversaturating the series for years, and I hope it's finally reached a breaking point.

What I think they should do is separate the multiplayer from the single-player campaign. Make MP free like Warzone and devote more resources to making a fully-fledged campaign that's released bi-annually. The CoD campaigns deliver on the graphics, but they need significant improvement in the gameplay and story writing. Activision should use the extra resources not devoted to CoD to develop new IP.
 
really hardcore gamers have been talking his same line for years now and COD is still #1 in sales. maybe Hardcore games are not the best audience to judge COD vs mass-market buyers
 
I've mentioned this before but next year's COD will give a clearer picture, especially if fan reception is very positive for MW2.

Overall, I think the franchise is in a healthy enough place where Activision has the time and goodwill to course correct and figure out where B2P CoD fits in the franchise.
 
I can't help but feel like that #1 issue will become more and more prominent as we get saturated with live service titles and battle passes. Every AAA game wants everyone to play forever now.
 
sheamus said:
really hardcore gamers have been talking his same line for years now and COD is still #1 in sales. maybe Hardcore games are not the best audience to judge COD vs mass-market buyers
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As you can see in the article and the OP, Vanguard has been the lowest selling CoD games in over a decade in several markets (UK, Spain, Japan).

So yeah it sells well but a big chunk of its audience skipped this year's release.
 
How about a game that brings something new to the table? Instead, PUBG and Fortnite have to come around the corner and show how it's done. This also applies to other genres of course (Genshin Impact (anime games), Amnesia: The Dark Descent (survival horror), etc.).

But well, as a successful company you prefer to manage what you have, otherwise it would mean effort.

And the scandals of many video game companies in the West don't help matters either.
 
Warzone revenue pretty much dwarfs any prior Call of Duty game I believe? Something like 5 million USD per day. So that's something close to like 100k Call of Duty games sold every day which is pretty damn insane.
 
How much does 90% of Xbox UK CoD sales being digital affect it's chart performance? What was the ratio like in previous years?
 
Jaded Alyx said:
How much does 90% of Xbox UK CoD sales being digital affect it's chart performance? What was the ratio like in previous years?
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Digital share declined this year versus the previous one in the UK, here's the full breakdown:
Xevross said:
Reposting this here:

2020 (Black Ops Cold War):

130k physical (22%)
450k digital (78%)
580k total

2021 (Vanguard)

96k physical (28%)
252k digital (72%)
348k total

And also we got this:



Physical was 70-30. Chris clarified this is console only so 57-43 with digital included.

This means:

PS physical 67k
PS digital 131k
PS total 198k (66% digital)

XB physical 29k
XB digital 121k
XB total 150k (81% digital)

That is again quite a huge difference in digital splits.
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Everything has its time but I feel Activision have just been treating COD badly. Constantly changing the series and then jumping back to former builds is pretty chaotic.
 
Can't exactly half-ass a call of duty game while there's a free to play call of duty game on the market. Even if it is battle royale, that's just free for all deathmatch with more players.
 
There's probably some crossover between "Too busy with other games," "too much CoD," and "Warzone is enough," right? Feels like those are all pretty close to being the same answer, with the notable exception that other games could mean any other game.
 
Is there any information on how many people buy CoD for the single-player? If they found a game with a quality MP in a previous entry, what motivation do they have to buy another if they could take or leave the single player experience?

And this is a half-joke: maybe associating your prior game with the polarizing image of Uncanny-Valley Reagan doesn’t help and it just wasn’t one of the available poll responses. Seriously, that face was everywhere for a while.
 
Alternate names for Call of Duty.

The Rules of Urban Tactics

Transporting Uranium Nuclear Arsenal

Generals and Regiments
 
My sister has been annually buying COD every year since... I wanna say COD 2? The last few years she's been pretty on and off with it and she's more cautious with Sledgehammer at the helm.

She's been having fun with it but absolutely hates the WW2 setting. Meaning she hates the heavy, slow to load guns. It was also a weird choice since Sledgehammer's last COD game was also WW2.

They went back to a more simplified zombies in which you play a roulette of different mini challenges each round "like survive for 2 minutes, escort ect" which a lot of fans don't seem to be a fan of. Though my sister does like it more since she hated the team objective based zombies.

I also think some people aren't a fan of the battle pass stuff in the regular game. It made progression much slower and people have Warzone which gets more addons with each mainline game.
 
Late to the discussion, but I'm not at the point where I think we can write down Call of Duty. Sure, it's definitely a weak performance, but we've had doom and resurrection in the past. Think Ghosts, and later Infinite Warfare. And the installment the year after took a hit, but people still returned later for the next Black Ops, for example. Modern Warfare 2019 was the best-selling game of 2019 and the #2 top-selling game of the year in 2020, behind Black Ops Cold War.
 
COD Mobile is very impressive. Warzone 2 must be their biggest project right now to get done; they need a single 'platform' supported across platforms.

I am having to laugh at people acting upset or shocked that MW2 is cross-gen though; people seem entirely ignorant of how this industry works.
 
Changes from April 2021:

Warzone : +25M players
Premium sales : +25M copies sold

From May 2021:

COD Mobile: +150M downloads
 
It would probably help sales if it was on Switch as well. In countries like Japan Playstation and XBox sell not well and Switch is the only important dedicated video game system. Times change.
 
EnergyDrink said:
It would probably help sales if it was on Switch as well. In countries like Japan Playstation and XBox sell not well and Switch is the only important dedicated video game system. Times change.
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Switch 2 maybe.
When that console has DLSS, it might be powerful enough. Because at that point, CoD will be next gen only. Not cross gen anymore
Game Size is also a huge issue.
 
EnergyDrink said:
It would probably help sales if it was on Switch as well. In countries like Japan Playstation and XBox sell not well and Switch is the only important dedicated video game system. Times change.
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I think that Switch will receive the remastered Modern Warfare trilogy games (if rumor of COD4:MWR planned on Switch is true).

 
Blue Monty said:
PS4/Xbox One versions will have the 70$ price tag also, I’m curious if that will affects sales ,it probably won’t, but is still quite a bold move to make. They must be really confident about the game being a hit.
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Its COD and its always surprised its price tag going back to MW2 (original) so I think they'll hit it.
 
Blue Monty said:
PS4/Xbox One versions will have the 70$ price tag also, I’m curious if that will affects sales ,it probably won’t, but is still quite a bold move to make. They must be really confident about the game being a hit.
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I think they are confident and they appear to be putting all their resources behind it. Every Activision studio has worked on the game.

 
Activision wants the rest of the world to be like Japan as far as pricing is concerned. Where they can pull a random number out of their ass because of perceived value.
 
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